The chronicles of a crazy idiot, hoping to catch that elusive big one.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Hungry Ghost Festival..!!!!

There are a few words that can describe what me and my cousin Navin felt that night.

DISAPPOINTED

SHITTY

F**KED UP

CHEATED

STUPID ASSES

Wondering what I'm talking about? Here are the nitty gritty details.

Place : Marina World Resort, Port Dickson

Start Date : 13 August 2005

Start Time : 8.00 pm

End Date : 14 August 2005

End Time : 4.00 am

Baits used : Dead prawn, fish, squid (sotong), pumpun

Number of rods : 5

Persons fishing : 2 (Sharma & Navin)

Total Catch : 1 fish (gelama), 1 crab.

I guess you can roughly figure out why we felt the way we felt. Imagine this; sitting for 8 freaking hours fishing, with a total of 5 rods in the water and all you have to show after all that is ONE miserable gelama fish and ONE crab. Even the crab was a fluke shot. It got tangle in the line while trying to steal the bait from the hook. The whole fishing experience was strange. Kinda weird you know. Maybe it was due to the Hungry Ghost Festival.

Why strange you might ask. Here's why... We had a total of 5 rods in the water. Strangely, we were not getting any bites. No movement whatsoever on our rods. We had bells on the tip of our rods which would sound at the slightest disturbance on our lines but the bells were eerily silent. It had me thinking that maybe fishing during Hungry Ghost Festival was not the right idea. It was as if the waters of Port Dickson was without fish. There was this one time, I reeled in my line after about 30 minutes of cast and guess what..!! The damn bait was still hooked onto the hook. No disturbance at all. No indications of small fishes biting into the bait. Funny eh.

Even the tides were funny that night. According to the tide table that we had, the time was suppose to come in at around 7:00 pm. Guess what, the total opposite happened. Instead of tide coming in, it was going out. Then at about 12:00 am the tide started to come in. That was when Navin got his gelama. The fish was landed at about 12:40 am after a brief fight. The both of us were pumped up after that catch. We were hoping to land more fishes. Sadly though, that was all the action that we had that night. Everything became silent after a while. No more biting, no more casting. We basically sat there and started to enjoy the beer that we brought. And then the strangest thing happened.... We saw the time going out again. At about 2:30 am the tide started to go out again. Strange huh. Something fishy (no pun intended) was going out.

Finally after spending 8 freaking hours of casting in the deep blue nothing we decided to call it a day. We had enough fishing for the day. Maybe next week we will try our luck again . Maybe by then, the Hungry Ghost would have eaten enough and let us catch some fishes.

Yes, i always go fishing there... around 6 times in the past 5 months to be precise. That place is truly wierd. Only in the first trip i got a HUGE load of fish- really assorted mix, all on prawn poles. There was a baby jenahak, small cermin, white snapper, ikan kunyit, soldier fish and bulus. Went with 3 friends, with 10 rods (yes, 10 rods) and 5 crab traps. The crab traps were a hit though- many blue swimmers of good sizes). We fished from 3pm to 8am the following morning and went back with an ice-box full of assorted fish. The biggest was the orange-banded snapper (Lutjanus spp.) around 15cm long which is still swimming happily in my aquarium at home..heheBUT, after that, the 5 times we went, hardly any fish, just netted afew for my aquarium. That place reputed to have big fish, fished from the dyke, didn't get any hookups, but had a siakap attack the lure- could see it really clearly! such a waste.But on certain nights, it can get really still- air mati, and the tides will behave wierd. Apparently, that place abit keras, so don't curse or boast around. I've met a group of ppl fishing there who told me of wierd things that have happened there from unseen voices to strange music from the bushes (someone left an Ipod behind?hehe) and wierd things in the lagoon waters. Personally, don't believe such stuff hence never seen/experienced anything out of the norm.Anyhow, give that place a shot- best is evening and early morning. Oh yea, i got a 1kg jenahak putih (pek chor)once from the lagoon using supermarket sotong..heheAll the best.